{O/C} And finally, we take you across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, where a fish named "Methuselah" was catapulted into the limelight overnight for being the oldest living aquarium fish in the world.
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Meet Methuselah. Its name somehow has a special connection with the Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, in the Bible. That Methuselah was said to have lived around 969 years.
But, Methuselah the fish isn't quite that ancient, but biologists at the California Academy of Sciences said gleefully that the fish is about 90 years old with no known companions.
It's a 4-foot-long, 40-pound Australian lungfish that was brought to the San Francisco museum back in 1939 from its origin of Australia. This primitive species of Australian lungfish with lungs and gills are considered the evolutionary nexus between fish and amphibians.
With its age and bizarre appearance, Methuselah is no strange to publicity, as back in 1947 it first appeared in a news report published by the San Francisco Chronicle, which quoted scientists as saying this kind of fish are renowned for being a possible "missing link" between terrestrial and aquatic animals.
Only recently did Methuselah become the oldest living aquarium fish, as back in 2017, the oldest Australian lungfish, named Granddad, at that time at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago passed away.
It's difficult to determine the species' sex without a risky blood test though. But Methuselah is believed to be a female, whom the senior biologist there say is a tough cookie when it comes to having figs.
What's noteworthy here is that the Australian lungfish is now a threatened species and no longer be exported from Australian waters. In consequence, biologists at that Academy say it's unlikely they'll get a replacement once Methuselah dies.
{Soundbite} ALLAN JAN, Senior Biologist, California Academy of Sciences: We know for a fact that she got here in (19)38, but we don't know how old she was when she got here. Based on the pictures that I've seen and the size of her when she arrived, she wasn't young then either. She wasn't a baby. So I want to say maybe tack on five, six years since the time she was here. They're protected by the Australian government now so it's probably impossible or very difficult to get another specimen over here in the states.
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